


A Tree Falls In The Forest

by Moraith



Series: The Nightmarish Extended Yuki Family [1]
Category: Persona 3
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Crossover, Drama, Gen, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-27
Updated: 2019-03-13
Packaged: 2019-10-17 09:12:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17557532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moraith/pseuds/Moraith
Summary: The World Ends With You AU of Persona 3 in which Ryoji and Makoto play the Reapers' Game together in Iwatodai. As always, Makoto ends up the centerpiece in a drama of cosmic scale that he cannot hope to take charge of, or even understand. All he can do is hope that having Death itself by his side will get him through it.And hey, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. The Reapers are always recruiting.





	1. If A Tree Falls In The Forest And Everyone Is Better Off, Did The Tree Deserve it?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I may have gotten too excited about Persona 3. Sometimes it takes 4000 words to introduce your plot and that's fine. Warning for vomiting, death, and implied self-harm in this chapter. Stay safe!

Iwatodai City was a breeding ground for cults. According to a documentary Makoto watched about it, it was because the Kirijo family was poisoning the tap water with chemicals that made people more pliant and subservient, but he was pretty sure that movie was funded by one of the cults. People on the news (the real news from outside, not the local talk shows that always devolved into fighting about whose cult had the real prophets) didn't know what to make of it, or the astronomical rates of violent crime. Sometimes they blamed it on the massive wealth inequality plaguing the city, sometimes they pointed to the French influences on the city's culture isolating its citizens from the rest of the country, sometimes they threw up their hands and said what everyone was really thinking: that people who lived in Iwatodai were just worse than the people who lived everywhere else and that was all there was to it.

Makoto loved Iwatodai. Maybe the childhood trauma had knocked something loose in his head, or maybe he was one of those morally bankrupt imbeciles the city was supposedly full of, but Makoto loved the city and the people who lived in it. He had lived all over the country after his parents' deaths, but he felt like a tourist in Tokyo and Osaka and Kobe and Takayama, never a resident. For better or for worse, Iwatodai had left its mark on him. When he returned to the city for the first time in ten years at age sixteen, a persistent malcontent that had been needling at him since he left disappeared. He slotted himself seamlessly back in as if he had never left. He wasn't part of any formal religious group, but he was far from immune to the odd misdirected fervor that defined Iwatodai's citizens in the minds of outsiders. Walking through the smoggy streets and grimy back alleys of Iwatodai City was a religious experience in and of itself. Every part of Iwatodai was home, from the elegant public parks dotting Port Island to the seedy mahjong parlors filled with cigarette smoke nestled in hidden corners on the mainland.

But even Makoto couldn't muster up much patience for The Children of Nyx. They weren't the biggest or most prominent of Iwatodai's cults, but they did have the most aggressive recruiting tactics. They didn't put up posters or shout up and down the sidewalks the way the most obnoxious proselytizers did, but they were dogged and persistent and they had men on the streets. Makoto got pestered by their recruiters at least once a week. On one memorable occasion, their leader himself, a gaunt man with thin-framed glasses and long wavy hair and a hapless affable demeanor, stopped by Makoto's dorm in person to try and spread the good word.

It was not a surprise when a wide-eyed young Nyxite accosted Makoto in the middle of track practice on a dreary late summer day. It was more surprising when she broke from the usual routine of telling him he was the chosen one who would be granted all the power in the world to tell him the city was alive. He nodded in agreement and waited for the part where he had to follow her home and give her ten thousand yen in entrance fees. Instead, she told him the city was dying. He nodded again, though he was less certain that was true. She told him he looked like a bright young man who wanted to make a difference. He didn't and he wasn't, but it was nice of her to say. Off in the distance, Makoto heard the telltale footsteps of the rest of the track team catching up with him. He took a step back. She grabbed his arm, her knuckles white and her long fingernails digging crescents into his arm.

" _Please,_ " she begged.

Makoto looked down at her hand, then back up at her face. He recognized her from somewhere, but could not place her. She wasn't the sort of person you should be unable to place: her hair was dyed a fiery red and she was in full gothic lolita fashion that must have taken her hours to put together. An idol? She was deathly pale and her face was covered in a thin sheen of cold sweat. She was sick, maybe, or on drugs. The fingers on her other hand, the one not clutching his arm in a death grip, trembled like they were trying to tear themselves off her body.

"I didn't want to force you," she said.

Makoto opened his mouth to inform her her voice was shaking. He found he could not speak.

He blinked, his brow furrowing. Black seeped in at the edges of his vision. His fingertips went cold, then numb, and then he lost control of his legs. He collapsed forward into her arms. Intense nausea settled in the pit of his stomach despite the soothing smell of her clean clothes blocking out the city's smog. For a moment, he thought he might throw up on her nice white dress and ruin it and not even be able to apologize. The next moment, everything went black.

* * *

Makoto awoke to the heady scent of pungent medicinal herbs stinging his nose. When he cracked open his eyes, he found himself looking up at dingy white tiles stained grey in places from the noxious fumes Mr. Edogawa's concoctions always gave off. He had been transported to the school nurse's office at some point, it seemed. The nausea from earlier hadn't faded and now his head was starting to ache and it seemed like every muscle in his body was sore. The nurse himself was nowhere to be found, but Junpei was standing over him, glaring daggers.

"You'd better have a _really_ good explanation for this, Makoto," Junpei fumed.

Makoto blinked. He didn't even have a bad explanation for how sick he felt. Maybe that girl cursed him. She looked like she might be a witch.

And then it came to him: Makoto recognized her because she was Junpei's creepy girlfriend. He'd only seen one picture of her when the two of them had first gotten together, but Junpei talked about her all the time. He was probably mad because he passed out with his face in her chest. That made sense.

"Chidori's been missing for days!" Junpei shouted. "Why did she come back to talk to _you?_ What happened to her?!"

Makoto tentatively sat up, though moving at all made his muscles scream in protest. He blinked again, trying in vain to get his vision to stop blurring. Junpei repeated his last question, louder and slower.

Makoto tried to shake his head to indicate that he had no idea what was wrong with Chidori. As soon as he moved his head, the nausea and the throbbing pain behind his eyes overwhelmed everything else. His vision went white. Bile rose up his throat, and before he could try to stop it, there was vomit on himself, the sheets, and Junpei's sleeve. Makoto let out a soft gurgling noise that was supposed to be an apology.

Junpei jumped back, gagging. He tugged off his jacket so quickly Makoto swore he could hear threads snapping.

"Shit, man, something's really wrong with you..." Junpei said. He brushed a few strands of Makoto's hair to the side and leaned in so close that Makoto could almost get his eyes to focus on Junpei's face. "More than usual, even," he added under his breath.

Makoto couldn't tell if that was a joke or if Junpei was just being honest. It was pretty funny either way. If he could breathe right, he would have laughed. Instead, he stared at the pool of bile and half-digested rice in his lap and listened to himself wheeze. He didn't even want to imagine what he must have looked like. At least there being food in his stomach meant he probably hadn't ruined Chidori's dress.

"I'm gonna go get Mr. Edogawa."

Junpei ran out of the room, leaving Makoto alone. The possibility of lying back down and pretending to be dead crossed his mind. On the off-chance one of them believed him, they might scream. It would be funny, but probably not funny enough to risk his body doing something else gross without his permission because he tried to move again. He did not pretend to be dead. He listened to the hypnotic ticking of the cheap plastic clock on the wall counting the seconds and settled for feeling dead, even if he didn't look it.

Junpei returned in a flustered tizzy before long with Mr. Edogawa in tow. Mr. Edogawa ushered Junpei out of the room with firm professional assurances that the situation was under control, then helped Makoto out of bed and into some clean clothes. Once the worst of the mess had been disposed of and Makoto was seated on the bed again, he wiped at Makoto's face with a damp cloth. The water was lukewarm and made every part of Makoto's skin it touched feel grimy, but he'd rather have that than be covered in puke and snot. He didn't complain.

"Your blood pressure is low. That's probably why you fainted. Hard to say what's causing the vomit and the sweating."

He tossed the dirty cloth over his shoulder toward the sink. It slapped against one of the drawers built into the counter next to the sink and fell to the floor.

"You on drugs? Not that it matters what you say. It's not like you'd tell me if you were."

Makoto closed his eyes and breathed in silence. He was not on drugs as far as he knew, which might be useful information if Mr. Edogawa would believe him. Since he as much as admitted he didn't care what Makoto had to say, Makoto kept his mouth shut.

Mr. Edogawa's chair creaked as he stood up. He took a few steps, then the cloth he had dropped on the floor hit the sink with an unpleasant wet slap. Liquid poured into a glass, then Mr. Edogawa returned to Makoto's side and pressed the glass into Makoto's hand. Makoto raised the glass to his lips and tipped it back. The liquid burned his throat. He drank it anyway, in small tentative sips between pained winces.

"Possession," Mr. Edogawa said firmly.

Makoto cracked open an eye. The liquid in the glass was, as far as Makoto could tell, nothing but water. Mr. Edogawa was peering at him over the rim of his glasses with a certain stony expression that usually preceded about an hour of lecture about mysticism.

"That water was blessed by three different priests. The pain proves you've got a spirit in you. But if that's not enough to get it out..."

He turned around to throw open a drawer. The stench of herbs magnified by a factor of ten and spread to fill every inch of the room, even the inside of Makoto's nose and mouth. Makoto wrinkled his nose. Moving his face made his headache flare up, so he stopped wrinkling his nose.

Mr. Edogawa closed the first drawer and opened another. Another blast of noxious leafy odors flooded the room. He grumbled under his breath as he rifled through the dried and decaying herbs that filled his drawers.

"I don't have anything in stock with enough kick to drive out a spirit this stubborn. Come back in a week and I'll have something cooked up for you," he said.

Makoto did not nod. Nodding, he suspected, would ruin another one of his shirts and give Mr. Edogawa another mess to clean up. He set the glass down on the flimsy little table next to the bed and got to his feet, shaking and in pain. Mr. Edogawa muttered a distracted farewell as Makoto shuffled out of the office.

Junpei was waiting outside in the hall, bouncing his leg and rubbing his bare arms, his mouth pressed into a thin line. He perked up when Makoto emerged from Mr. Edogawa's office, grinning at Makoto with too much tooth and not enough heart.

"Hey, Makoto! Feeling better? What's the word?"

Makoto lifted his shoulders slightly. "...Possession, apparently."

"Possession...?" Junpei exhaled a long weary sigh, his face falling. "Want me to take you to a real hospital?"

"Nah."

Junpei scrunched up his face, visibly weighing his options. "If you puke on me again, you're going to the hospital," he concluded.

Makoto gave him a weak trembling thumbs up.

* * *

Makoto did not puke on Junpei again. In fact, he did not puke at all. The pain and the nausea faded overnight and didn't come back.

Makoto went back to Mr. Edogawa's office at the end of the week anyway, since he had been asked to. As soon as he was through the door, Mr. Edogawa presented him with a fresh glass of noxious herbal poison, which he drank. Beyond the bitter taste of medicine sticking to his teeth, the concoction had no noticeable effect.

Because Makoto was no longer a trembling sickly husk when Mr. Edogawa proceeded to his examination, Mr. Edogawa declared the treatment a roaring success. Makoto told him the symptoms had disappeared after the first night, but Mr. Edogawa was having none of it. He pulled a pen out of his pocket and readied it with a triumphant _click_ , then rolled his chair over to the desk on the far side of the room where he kept his clipboard full of incomprehensible scribbled notes. Makoto left the room while Mr. Edogawa's pen scratched against paper and he muttered to himself about finally getting his findings published and sweet, sweet vindication.

That night, at exactly midnight according to the glowing green digits on his bedside alarm clock, Makoto awoke to an unfamiliar lilting voice.

"Hi, how are you?" it said.

Makoto blinked awake and squinted at the clock first, then at the still closed and presumably still locked door to his room, then at the small boy sitting on his bed and smiling at him. The boy chuckled without a trace of discomfort.

"How'd you get in here?" Makoto mumbled.

"I'm always with you," the boy replied.

He paused for a moment, not quite long enough for Makoto to get his thoughts in order and respond, but long enough for the silence to be palpable.

He continued, as if nothing had happened, "Soon, the end will come. I remembered, so I thought I should tell you."

The boy's smile took on an expectant edge. He leaned in, his already too wide eyes widening even further. Makoto did not know what response the boy expected. It wasn't anything Makoto hadn't heard before.

"I don't care."

"Really?"

Makoto stared blankly at the boy's pleasant inquisitive smile. In any other context, the question would have sounded like a taunt or an insult, but the boy appeared nothing but innocent and curious.

"Are you the spirit inside me?" Makoto asked.

The eagerness in the boy's expression seeped away, but he did not seem to be disappointed in the least. His smile remained as light and content as ever.

"Yes, I am," he said.

That explained the breaking and entering and the lack of social skills. Spirits didn't have to care about things like privacy and tact. It also meant Mr. Edogawa's latest poison was just as useless as all the others. This must've been why he never got any research published.

"Okay," Makoto said. "I'm going back to sleep."

"Sleep well, Makoto."

Makoto pulled the blankets up over his head, shut his eyes, and drifted off. The boy did not move or speak again.

* * *

Chidori came back to civilization safe and sound the day after Makoto passed out on her, though they did not meet again until the next week. It was the day after the spirit first showed itself. Makoto had nothing on his schedule except a student council meeting he didn't feel like going to, so he wandered off campus to people-watch as soon as school let out. He spotted her in a park just down the street from Gekkoukan, sitting on a bench with a sketchbook. He approached her with a hand raised in greeting, fully expecting her not to recognize him.

She looked up from her sketchbook. When her eyes met his, all the color drained from her face.

"You're alive," she whispered, as if raising her voice would shatter the illusion standing in front of her.

Makoto looked down at himself. As far as he could tell, he was indeed alive. He looked up and said, "Yup."

She threw her sketchbook down on the bench beside her and sprang to her feet. She ran toward Makoto and took his face in her hands, peering into his eyes with an almost painful intensity.

"Is it still inside you?" she hissed.

Makoto contemplated her palms on his cheeks and her face inches from his and the urgency in her voice. "...Are you hitting on me?"

Chidori's fingers tensed, her fingernails digging into Makoto's jaw. "You're a monster. You must be. Even Takaya couldn't..."

Makoto glanced down at what he could see of Chidori's thin wrists. Her skin was pale, far paler than his own, and covered with a lattice of thin scars. Some of them had faded so much with age that they were nearly invisible; some were still an angry freshly-healed red. He wondered if Junpei knew.

"Are you talking about that weird kid?" he ventured.

Chidori's fingers began to tremble. "Has it been speaking to you? Has it taken form?"

"Yeah. He's a weird little kid in pajamas. He's got a mole right there," Makoto lifted a hand to poke Chidori's face, right under her left eye, "like Tomie."

Chidori blanched further. Her trembling hands fell away from Makoto's face. "So, it really is coming..."

Makoto scratched at the spot on the back of his jaw where Chidori's fingernails had left imprints. "What's coming?"

"Nyx's Avatar is incubating inside you," Chidori said. Her expression hardened, turning grave and solemn. "When Nyx awakens, this world will crumble to dust. The only way to prevent the world's destruction is to destroy the Avatar's vessel before it reaches its full strength."

"Oh," Makoto said. It was tempting to dismiss the story as the senseless ramblings of yet another identical cult, but this time, he had seen it. That boy was real, and he personally told Makoto the end was on its way. "...okay."

"I housed the Avatar before you. It was my duty to sacrifice myself, my happiness, so that the world might live on." Chidori took a long step backward toward the bench. She sat down and lifted her sketchbook once again in her trembling hands. "The thought frightened me. The Avatar was destroying me and itself but... I didn't want to go. I passed the curse along to you," she said. She flipped the book to an earlier page. She ran her fingertips along the gentle lines of charcoal that formed Junpei's face on the page. "I must not allow Nyx to steal my life from me again."

Makoto scratched the back of his leg with the toe of his shoe. The narrative wasn't the clearest thing in the world, but broad strokes of understanding would do for the moment. "Are you going to kill me?"

"No. Not yet. There's still time."

Makoto could not figure out what feeling it was that was pressing down on his chest, so he didn't try to put it into words. Instead, he nodded at Chidori and left her to her art. She did not look up again.

* * *

The little ghost boy didn't appear again for a few days. Makoto didn't see Chidori either, though he kept an eye out for her in case she tried to sneak up on him with a knife. But then, on a chilly Wednesday evening, at midnight, Makoto awoke once more to a blithe greeting from the boy.

"Hi, how have you been?"

Makoto opened his eyes, glanced at the clock, then turned his attention to the boy sitting on the edge of his bed.

"Hey, Nyx Avatar," he mumbled.

"That's a little rude, don't you think? I don't call you ‘human.'" The boy cocked his head to the side. "Hey, if you don't mind, can I be your friend? I'm very curious about you..." He straightened up, his smile growing brighter. "Is that okay?"

Makoto did not want to be the boy's friend, especially, but he had no reason to refuse and several reasons not to. In the interests of not antagonizing the monster living inside him, he said, "Yeah, whatever. What's your name?"

"Name...?" the boy said, his lips curling down into a puzzled frown. "Oh, I see. I need a name." His expression smoothed out into his usual pleasant smile while he looked off into space, humming thoughtfully. "My name is... Pharos. You may call me that if you wish."

Pharos disappeared, then reappeared standing at the foot of the bed. "It's getting late, so I'll go now. I'm already looking forward to our next meeting."

Makoto opened his mouth, intending to tell Pharos that if he cared about that sort of thing, he ought to stop by in the daytime instead of at midnight, but Pharos was already gone without a trace. Makoto closed his mouth, closed his eyes, and fell back asleep.

* * *

Over the next few months, Pharos appeared in Makoto's room from time to time to make small talk. Sometimes he would talk about the end of the world he swore was happening any day now. Most of the time, it was nothing so dramatic. Makoto came to expect it, if not enjoy it.

Every time he appeared, Pharos grew more talkative and his presence grew more difficult to ignore. Makoto supposed that, just like Chidori said he would, he was getting stronger. He did not threaten Makoto, nor did he mention Nyx by name, nor did he display any destructive tendencies. All he did was talk and ask questions. They were, roughly, friends.

Life carried on. Chidori did not come at Makoto with a knife. The Children of Nyx did not approach him again for further recruitment. Makoto could almost forget that he had somehow ended up in the middle of an apocalyptic prophecy.

But all good things must come to an end. It was another frigid winter day when the student council president asked Makoto to stay late with her after school to fill out some last-minute paperwork. As soon as the other members left the room, Mitsuru stared Makoto down. Her arms were crossed over her chest and every inch of her radiated severe accusatory authority.

"Yuki, you are aware of the foreign entity residing in your soul, are you not?"

Makoto blinked. "You mean Pharos?"

"Pharos...?" Mitsuru echoed, brow furrowing. "I was not aware it had given itself a name. If so, things are far worse than we anticipated..."

Mitsuru lifted a hand to her face, covering her tight frown. Her shoulders tensed. She did not seem to notice when, a moment later, Pharos appeared right next to her.

"Hi, Makoto. How are you?" he began.

Makoto glanced up at the clock on the wall. It was not even close to midnight.

"This is the first time we've talked during the daytime," Pharos pointed out. He turned his ever-present smile to the window, where the very last remains of sunlight were sinking below the horizon. "Nice weather, isn't it?"

Mitsuru moved. She reached into her pocket for her cell phone and typed out a message.

Pharos turned to look at Mitsuru, casting a mournful smile up at her face. "I get the feeling things weren't supposed to end like this," he murmured.

He grinned at Makoto, brighter and toothier and more human than any expression Makoto had ever seen on his face. Mitsuru's fingers moved with ever more urgent intensity. Behind him, Makoto heard the _click_ of a door's lock engaging.

"I'll always treasure our conversations. No matter what happens, I won't forget you. Our bond can never be severed."

Pharos disappeared in the blink of an eye. Mitsuru snapped her fingers. The window behind her shattered. A bullet pierced Makoto's head, right between the eyes. Everything went dark.

* * *

Makoto awoke without a hole in his head sitting on a bench in a park. The flowers and shrubs were buried in a thick layer of snow that painted the landscape a uniform monochrome white. He could feel the pressure of somebody leaning up against him, but the person's body was cold, like ice. Makoto turned his head and blinked blearily at the person, or person-shaped thing, next to him.

Makoto's own face looked back at him, with a polite eager smile and slicked back hair and a mole under his left eye like Tomie. "Hi, Makoto," said the mysterious boy. "How are you feeling?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OMAKE: 
> 
> Pharos: "My name is... Pharos. You may call me that if you wish."  
> Makoto: "Nah. I'm gonna call you Souichi."  
> Pharos: "...I see."  
> From then on, Pharos was known exclusively as "Souichi" because he kept forgetting he had a name until Makoto had already introduced him incorrectly. Makoto suggested he start chewing on nails so the bit worked better. He did not.


	2. If Two Trees Fall Into Each Other In The Forest And Never Hit The Ground, Did A Tree Fall In The Forest At All?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1: There's a bit about the P3 movies on the Megami Tensei wiki that describes a certain conflict as happening "due to [Makoto's] personality." I'd like to think that applies not only to this chapter, but also to everything I've ever written involving him. To Akihiko, Shinjiro, and Mitsuru, I apologize. Elizabeth doesn't get one. She's fine.  
> 2: A human is a kind of animal.
> 
> Warnings for this chapter: Uhh... impalement? Body horror, maybe? I think that's it. Stay safe, everyone!

Despite the feet of snow blanketing the landscape, the air was a swamp; warm and sticky and heavy. The sun shone down on Makoto and nearly burned where it touched his skin. Last he checked, it was winter and had not snowed. Though to be fair, last he checked, he had been shot to death. Things must have changed at some point.

Makoto sat up straighter, leaning away from the other boy's freezing cold shoulder. He looked down at himself, to discover that he was still wearing his school uniform. He had never thought about it before, but now that he was here, he would have preferred to be wearing something more comfortable in the afterlife. The boy next to Makoto wasn't saddled with the uniform, which struck him as unfair. He wore a monochrome ensemble straddling the line between elegant and ridiculous, with rolled-up flared sleeves and a pair of thin black suspenders. A wide scarf in an ugly bright yellow covered his collar and draped over his shoulders and the back of the bench.

"My name is Ryoji Mochizuki. It's nice to meet you," the boy said.

"Not Pharos?"

Ryoji chuckled. He reached up to his neck to stroke his fingers along his scarf. "No. Not Pharos." He stared Makoto right in the eyes, a serene smile on his face. "Does that bother you? I could pretend if you'd like, but I don't think it's good to lie..."

Makoto inspected Ryoji's face. He was older than Pharos by a wide margin, but he had the same piercing bright blue eyes and the same beauty mark and the same corpselike pallor and the same carefree smile. Ryoji's face was not quite exactly the same as Makoto's with a smudge under his left eye, but the resemblance was undeniable. Ryoji's cheeks were a little less round and he was paler and his eyes were a different color, but those small variations didn't hide the template of Makoto's face underneath.

Makoto glanced down at the dissonant ray of sunshine around Ryoji's neck. "Nice scarf."

Ryoji's smile did not so much as twitch. "Thank you," he said.

Ryoji laced his fingers together and let his hands fall into his lap as his gaze drifted up to the sky. "This, too, will soon come to an end. I doubt I'll ever be back here."

Makoto followed Ryoji's gaze upward. There was nothing to see up there: no clouds, no birds, no airplanes leaving white trails in their wake. Nothing but the sun and the washed-out grey-blue of the sky.

"Where _is_ here?" Makoto murmured.

"It's your soul, Makoto."

"Oh."

Makoto poked his toe into one of the towering piles of snow surrounding his bench. The snow let out a soft crunch. Nothing changed.

"What are you doing here?" Makoto asked.

"Saying goodbye," Ryoji said. He smiled at Makoto. "And hello."

* * *

Makoto woke up in more pain than he knew was possible. Every inch of his body, from his head to his toes, inside and out, felt as though it was being dragged over a field of broken glass.

He was lying on a smooth tile floor in a room bathed in sickly green light. The ceiling overhead was covered in clock faces of different shapes and sizes. The hands on all the clocks twirled forward at breakneck speeds, accelerating and slowing down at random and falling in and out of sync with the ones around them. On a more concerning note, he no longer had legs, was surrounded by a pool of his own blood, and an unfamiliar young woman had her hands buried in his ribcage. If everything below his torso was gone, he reasoned, it shouldn't have hurt at all, let alone this badly, but reasoning didn't make the pain stop.

The first thing that registered about the girl through the delirium was that she was cute. The second was that, given the situation and her chalk-white hair and faintly glowing yellow eyes, she probably wasn't human. Not that Makoto intended to let that stop him. If he had come back from the dead, there's no way he was still human either.

"Hey, baby," he wheezed. "Did it hurt when you fell from heaven?" He winked, though to the untrained eye, it could have been a conveniently-timed involuntary wince.

The girl's hands stopped moving. She lifted her head, looking up from Makoto's mangled chest to his face.

"My, I was not aware I had Fallen at all. Have you considered that you have ascended to Heaven's ranks to join me? You certainly look the part," the girl responded, with a wink in return and a conversational tone more befitting a dinner date than an emergency medical procedure. "Though if I am so unfortunate as to lose my standing, I will be sure to keep you posted."

Makoto exhaled a breath through his nose, the corners of his mouth quirking up ever so slightly. "Nice," he mumbled, and then he was out again, like a light.

* * *

The full moon filled a third of the sky over Iwatodai. It was dyed a rich yellow like the moon in a children's picture book. The moonlight covered the city in a permanent twilight. The light and shadows intermingled in every corner, their borders fuzzy and ever-shifting. No signs in storefronts were illuminated. No light in any home was lit. Not a single streetlamp shone on the sidewalks. The only thing to see by was the moon's feeble glow.

Upon waking up in yet another unfamiliar location, Makoto decided that whoever was dragging him around the city while he was unconscious had way too much time on their hands. Either that or his dreams needed to settle down, depending on whether any of this turned out to be real or not. He looked down at himself to check on the state of his limbs and found to his surprise that his arms and legs were present and accounted for. The unbearable aching had faded, but he still felt twitchy and hollow, like he always did after a sleepless night plagued by nightmares.

Before he could muster up the energy to get himself to his feet, a pale calloused hand descended into Makoto's field of vision. He looked up to discover the hand was attached to Akihiko Sanada, one of the most popular and well-known students at Gekkoukan High School. Makoto had had exactly one conversation with Akihiko before, when he visited Gekkoukan's boxing club. Akihiko was the club's captain, and he treated boxing like a matter of life and death. It was charming enough from an outside perspective, but Makoto had no interest in being expected to put that much effort into an after-school sports club, so he had left without joining and never looked back. Of all the people Makoto expected to see in this situation, whatever situation this was, Akihiko was not high on the list.

"Sanada-senpai, you have wings," Makoto mumbled.

The skeletal wings on Akihiko's back twitched. Akihiko nodded and hauled Makoto to his feet. Makoto waited for the pain to return, or for his legs to turn to jelly and send him tumbling back down, but that didn't happen. It was as if the whole thing, from the bullet to the girl to the agony, had been nothing more than a dream.

Makoto glanced over his shoulder to check his own back for wings. He didn't have any. Behind him, the sidewalks were lined with countless coffins, sliding up and down the streets like video game characters with broken animations.

"Don't wanna rush you, Yuki, but you're gonna have to look alive here. It's not safe." Akihiko punctuated the order by tugging Makoto's arm forward.

Makoto didn't feel any more unsafe than usual in the surreal cityscape bathed in twilight and there didn't seem to be anything alive in the vicinity aside from the two of them, but Akihiko was confident, so Makoto didn't argue the point. He slipped his hands into his pockets and staggered down the street after Akihiko, staring down at his own feet for fear of tripping.

"To make a long story short, you're dead," Akihiko began. "Everyone here is. Being dead and being alive... well, it turns out they're not too different for some of us. You're one of the ones who gets to stick around. Consider yourself lucky."

Makoto was far from inclined to consider himself lucky by any measure, but since Akihiko had stopped walking to turn toward and look at him, he nodded. Akihiko turned back around and kept walking, apparently satisfied.

"It's going to be an adjustment, but if you put some effort into it, you should be able to get back to your life before too long..."

Akihiko trailed off, his shoulders tensing. He stopped short and extended his arm in front of Makoto to signal him to stop as well.

"Don't move," he hissed.

Makoto walked right into Akihiko's outstretched arm in feeble half-joking protest, then stopped moving. When he lifted his head, there was another person standing in the middle of the street among the cars and the coffins. The person was about a block away and didn't seem to be moving. They were too far away for Makoto to see their face, but between the skin so deathly pale it seemed to glow in the twilight, the hair and clothing too dark to fade into the dimly-lit night, and the scarf the same eerie bright yellow as the moon hanging limp around their neck, who else could it be?

Ryoji waved hello.

Makoto glanced up at Akihiko, hoping for an explanation of what he ought to be afraid of. No such explanation came. Akihiko's entire body was tense and wound up, like he was ready to bolt at any second. His attention was focused on Ryoji with the intense desperation of a mouse who has just spotted a hungry cat stalking around a corner.

Ryoji lowered his arm and let his hand hover over his heart, then turned his head to look up into the sky, at the moon. A cold gust of wind howled down the street, flying right through Makoto's clothes and skin and chilling him right down to the bone. Ryoji's scarf danced in the breeze, as if brought to life by the icy wind. Makoto clenched his jaw to keep his teeth from chattering.

"Yuki, run," Akihiko said. "Turn left, run, and don't look back. Someone else will meet you and get you somewhere safe." When Makoto didn't respond, Akihiko took confusion and apathy for kindness and added, "Don't worry about me. I can handle myself."

Makoto stared in silence at what little of Akihiko's face he could see. It would be pointless, he knew, and cruel, he suspected, to correct Akihiko's mistaken impression.

Akihiko elbowed Makoto in the chest, gentle but insistent. " _Go._ "

"Okay."

Makoto stretched his legs and stared at the pools of thick red maybe-blood on the ground and considered, briefly, whether it was inappropriate to pretend he was at a track club meeting while he ran for his life. Akihiko shouted at him, again, more desperate than ever, to get moving. Makoto dropped that train of thought and started sprinting down the sidewalk instead.

It turned out to not be worth thinking about anyway. The air in this Iwatodai, the twilit one with the massive moon and the coffins, was colder and thicker than the real Iwatodai's smog. It settled in Makoto's lungs in layers with every breath until he felt like his chest was full of soup. Even if he tried, there was no way he could fool himself into thinking he was at school running with his teammates. He dodged silent oak boxes instead of indignant adults trying to kidnap him or sell him things or get him to join their cults. He was cold and alone and his footsteps echoing off the flat walls and dark windows that surrounded him were the only things he could hear. There were no engines, no sirens, no footsteps, no grave conversations just too quiet to make out; only the echoes and Makoto's own labored breathing.

The other person who was going to bring Makoto to safety was waiting for him in the middle of the street a few blocks away from where he left Akihiko. It was a boy about Makoto's age, he was fairly sure, though Makoto could not recall having seen him in town before. He had skeletal wings just like Akihiko's, though he had them tucked against his back so as little of them as possible was visible. He was tall and broad, but wore a too-large coat and stood with his shoulders hunched as though he were trying to shrink into himself and disappear.

Makoto slowed to a stop on the sidewalk as close to the boy as possible, looked up at his face, and said, "If you stand in the street like that, you might get run over."

The boy glowered at him. "Huh? You see any cars here?" He clicked his tongue in annoyance and gestured for Makoto to come closer. "Whatever. Makoto Yuki, right? I'm Shinjiro Aragaki. Come with me. It's not safe here."

Makoto took a moment to catch his breath. One of the coffins traveling the sidewalk slid right through him as he panted for air. His lungs cleared within seconds, but the heavy feeling in his chest migrated to his limbs instead of disappearing. After running for five minutes, he felt like he had gone fifty kilometers. He shuffled a few steps toward Shinjiro, then paused at the curb to figure out how to get out into the street when his legs felt like they were about to fall off.

Shinjiro approached and scooped Makoto up and slung him over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes before Makoto had a chance to give it a try. Shinjiro's wings, though they appeared to be solid and made of bone, were not tangible. Makoto passed right through them.

"This is hitting him way too hard. Something's wrong," Shinjiro said.

"Are you talking to yourself?"

"I'm talking to HQ, dingbat. Buckle up. We're heading back."

Shinjiro adjusted Makoto as much as he could on his own while silently encouraging Makoto to make himself more comfortable. More comfortable didn't amount to actually comfortable, but it could've been worse. Once Makoto was situated, Shinjiro set off, taking long strides down the middle of the street.

Before long the city was no longer lifeless. Strange animals slunk up and down the sidewalks: mangy dogs with glowing red eyes and cats whose legs dissolved halfway down and turned into puddles of dark liquid that stuck to the pavement with every step. Flocks of pigeons with wings made of thin black smoke flew overhead like dark storm clouds. Inky blobs skittered by on the pavement on thin insectoid legs. It was the kind of thing that people often described as being like a nightmare. Makoto had never had a nightmare that was anything like this, so he supposed it was like something out of someone else's nightmare. Maybe it was Shinjiro's; Shinjiro avoided touching any of the creatures with a fastidiousness that bordered on paranoid, shying away from even the smallest and most harmless of them with equal urgency.

"What're those?" Makoto mumbled into Shinjiro's shoulder.

"Noise. They're monsters. If we touch 'em, they'll swarm us and we'll be here all day." Shinjiro stopped short as a trail of shadowy roaches skittered past his feet. "These things are everywhere today..." he grumbled.

Makoto watched the Noise skitter by one by one in a line that seemed to go on forever. They kept coming with no end in sight, even as Shinjiro took a long awkward step over them.

"There weren't any earlier," Makoto said.

"Yeah. Because that huge one ate them all."

"Huge one?"

Shinjiro paused again to look over his shoulder at Makoto's face, his expression radiating disbelief in waves. "Aki said it was right in front of you. How'd you even manage to get to me if you're this out of it...?"

Makoto blinked at Shinjiro. That must have meant Ryoji was a monster. Makoto didn't see the resemblance between him and these half-dead animals, but he filed that information away for mockery purposes anyway in case Ryoji decided to show up again. Even if he turned out not to be a weird bug, apparently he had eaten a lot of them. That was pretty funny.

"I'm just that good," Makoto mumbled, since Shinjiro was still staring at him. He winked for good measure. He did not bother to smile.

"You're a fucking wreck. You're lucky you didn't get eaten out there."

Shinjiro's attention drifted to something unseen. He huffed irritably and muttered, "That easy, huh?" to someone. Presumably 'HQ' again.

He turned his attention fully away from Makoto and back to the road in front of him. When he started off again, it was at a faster pace, a sort of half-jog that he could still pretend was an ordinary walk if pressed. Makoto considered informing him that walking like that was going to ruin his knees, but maybe dead people didn't get knee injuries. It wasn't any of his business anyway, as long as Shinjiro didn't drop him in the next few minutes.

"Aki, you holding up out there?" Shinjiro said.

Whatever response there was, if any, Makoto couldn't hear it. Shinjiro's shoulders tensed. He weaved between coffins and hissing cats and barking dogs on the sidewalks and ran in earnest.

"Where did it _go?_ " Shinjiro clicked his tongue. "Whatever. I'm almost back. We'll go over it once this kid's got somewhere to rest."

Makoto glanced at his surroundings. They were back in exceedingly familiar territory: on the outskirts of Gekkoukan's campus. It was as good a place as any to be the headquarters for a bunch of dead teenagers, he supposed.

There were no coffins to speak of once they passed through the gates and entered the campus proper. The white marble of the main school building looked especially ugly in the sickly green twilight. Makoto had stayed at school well into the evening plenty of times, but it never looked like this. All the elegantly-kept flowers and shrubbery in front of the school were wilting away from neglect or lack of light. The few scattered students who had to stay late for club activities or secret rooftop trysts or reprimands from angry teachers were nowhere to be seen. Though there were no coffins or shadowy monsters to be seen, Makoto felt more disoriented and out of place here than in the rest of the city.

Mitsuru Kirijo stepping out of the schoolhouse and approaching him with skeletal wings flared and without a trace of guilt didn't help matters.

"Thank you, Aragaki. I'll take it from here," she said coolly.

Shinjiro knelt down to let Makoto climb off his shoulders. Makoto obliged, though given the choice he would rather not have had to stand. Shinjiro stood back up and stretched his aching muscles. He really was tall when he wasn't slouching, but a moment later he yawned and went back to making himself as small as possible.

"Don't do anything too crazy. He needs to rest," Shinjiro said. "Whatever bullshit plans you've got cooked up can wait, got it?"

Mitsuru nodded. "Of course." She put a hand on her hip and nodded toward the school building. "The same goes for you, Aragaki. Akihiko will return shortly. You should relax until he arrives."

"Yeah, yeah."

Shinjiro slouched off toward the schoolhouse. He lifted his hand in a lazy little wave goodbye, then he was gone, sealed behind heavy doors dyed green by the moon's eerie light.

With Shinjiro gone, Mitsuru and Makoto stood alone, facing each other in the pale moonlight among the dying greenery.

Makoto nodded toward the wings on Mitsuru's back. "Those are cool."

Mitsuru's brow furrowed. She opened her mouth to respond, then closed it. "...Thank you," she replied, tentative and uncertain.

Makoto gave her a thumbs up.

Mitsuru's composure fled her, too thoroughly interrupted by Makoto's unexpected reaction for her to piece it back together.

"...To be frank, I expected you to demand an apology," she began, unsure. She crossed her arms over her chest and sighed, her gaze drifting to the cobblestones underfoot. "For what it's worth, I am sorry it had to come to this. I assure you it was not in cold blood."

Makoto stared blankly at her. "I don't care."

Mitsuru's grip on her arms tightened. "...I understand. It must be a terrible betrayal, no matter what explanations I offer you. Even if you cannot forgive me, I ask that you trust that your sacrifice had a purpose. If you had not given your life, none of us would be standing here."

Makoto shrugged. "Whatever."

Mitsuru glanced up at Makoto's face, her expression severe and incredulous in equal measure. "I will do everything in my power to ensure you have a comfortable transition to the Underground," she continued.

Makoto did not know what that entailed, but comfortable sounded pretty good. He nodded. "Cool." He paused, weighing his options, then added, "Can I go sit down?"

Mitsuru pressed a hand to her forehead. "Perhaps I was too hasty. Yes, of course. We will resume our discussion once you have had time to recover. Follow me."

Mitsuru walked back toward the schoolhouse, her heels clicking on the cobblestones with every step. Makoto shuffled after her, nearly tripping on the uneven surface with every step.

Not a single light was on in the interior of the schoolhouse. Even inside, the feeble green light cast by the too-large moon was the only thing to see by. It filtered in through the windows, illuminating the familiar corridors just enough that Makoto could tell they were the same as they were in the real world. If he didn't know the school like the back of his hand, navigation would have been difficult. As it was, he could close his eyes and navigate by muscle memory and pretend he had come to school in the dead of night while the heat was off.

He expected Mitsuru to stop him or at the very least scold him him when he wandered off toward his own classroom, but she seemed content to let him lead the way. She followed a step behind in stony silence. Makoto listened to his own footsteps and Mitsuru's sharper footsteps behind him as he ascended the stairs and made his way down the second floor hallway.

He cracked open an eye as he entered his own classroom, vaguely hoping to see Ms. Toriumi at the front of the room ready to lecture him about being late or Junpei shoving more pictures of his creepy girlfriend at his face or Yukari telling him to wash his hair for the fifty millionth time. Instead, it was as hollow and empty as the rest of the school. Makoto shrugged it off, shuffled to his desk, and sat down. He curled up and made himself as comfortable as possible for a nap. It wasn't the same when there wasn't a class being taught around him, but he was fairly certain he could manage.

"There are beds in the nurse's office downstairs..." Mitsuru murmured.

Makoto cracked open an eye again to give Mitsuru an unimpressed look. Mitsuru shook her head hastily.

"Never mind. Rest well, Yuki. I will be nearby if you need me."

* * *

 Makoto awoke in an unfamiliar room to rattling chains and the deafening grind of stone against metal. If he weren't still seated at the same desk he fell asleep at, he would have been concerned about his new sleepwalking habit. This time, it at least looked sort of like his classroom, if someone had removed all the furniture and coated the walls with blood. The room was large and square and empty and cold. A faint smell of ozone tickled Makoto's nose. He yawned. Inhaling that much of whatever was in the air here made him lightheaded.

A blur of black and white and yellow appeared in front of Makoto, rendered indistinct by his bleary sleep-addled vision.

"Hello, Makoto," Ryoji said. "I didn't mean to wake you. I'm sorry."

Makoto blinked a few times to clear his eyes. Ryoji's mild pleasant smile came into focus.

"Kirijo-senpai, the monster's here!" Makoto said.

"She isn't here, Makoto." Ryoji reached out toward Makoto's face and brushed a few strands of hair out of his eyes. Ryoji's fingers were cold as ice. "Can I help you instead?"

Makoto flinched away from Ryoji's hand. Ryoji did not reach forward again, nor did he withdraw. His hand hovered in the same place, as if Makoto hadn't moved at all.

"I don't think Mitsuru will be happy with you," Ryoji added, not unkindly. "I'm not sure if asking her for help is a good idea."

Makoto leaned as far away from Ryoji as his stiff chair would allow him to. "Why?"

"Because she thought this place was hers, and you took it from her."

Makoto frowned. He opened his mouth, hoping his brain would formulate a question for him. Ryoji beat him to the punch.

"Makoto, if you don't want my help, would you mind if I tried something? I'm curious."

Makoto did not have time to say that yes, he would mind if Ryoji tried something. By the time he started to speak, Ryoji had already stabbed him through the heart.

Ryoji's arm had transformed in an instant into a glistening blade made of something black and shiny. Ryoji thrusted the blade through Makoto's chest with a serene smile that did not so much as twitch. Red blood burst out of the wound and spilled down Ryoji's transformed arm. At his elbow, or where his elbow ought to have been, the blood soaked into Ryoji's crisp white shirt, leaving an ugly stain behind.

Makoto's own clothes were also ruined, he was sure, but he couldn't see them as easily. He coughed weakly. A flood of copper filled his mouth, the remnants of a punctured lung. The overwhelming pain and dizziness blocked out Makoto's senses, turning them dull and fuzzy at best. But still, he swore as he let go of the last scraps of his consciousness that he could hear Ryoji speak.

"Good night, Makoto. Sleep well."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OMAKE:
> 
> (Ryoji, busting into Gekkoukan which is filled with people minding their own business and transforming it into a nightmare tower filled with ghosts): It's free real estate! :)


End file.
